


Languish

by Cottonfruit



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 21:30:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cottonfruit/pseuds/Cottonfruit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Confinement takes its toll.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Languish

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after the season one finale

Within asylum walls time is measured not in days or hours but in routine. Will graham spends what he presumes to be nights on quiet reflection. 

Lying on his lumpy little cot he finds neither rest nor restoration. In the pit of his stomach there is a dull ache. He knows he hasn't been eating well. What he doesn't know is why he can still taste Abigail Hobbes. He thinks he would scream if he didn't feel so empty. It is as though the good Dr Lecter has scooped out his insides. Just like the bastard did to Abigail. Will sucks in shaky lungfuls of air in an attempt to fill the void. He tries reciting the alphabet to calm himself. It doesn't help when he can’t get passed ‘A’. 

_My name is Will Graham_ he tells himself. _I did not kill Abigail Hobbes. Georgia Madchen was wrong. I will recover_. This has the desired effect and his breathing slows. 

He stills feels like a husk of a man though. 

-

None of Will’s friends or relatives have visited him. He wishes they would. He wouldn't even mind the sad, pity-laden stares they were bound to give him. He knows those looks. He’d been getting them since he was a child; First from his parents, then from the doctors and the teachers. Dr Chilton doesn't look at him like that. Chilton looks hungry. He refuses to think of the other doctor who looks at him that way. It’s hard to build forts when your mind is the only thing you have left. Associations come quickly. He needs to get out of his head.

He asks for books and he receives them. He never specifies which sort. The paltry, haphazard collection contains both fiction and non-fiction. There is a bible, The Call of the Wild (at this he smiles), a battered compilation of Freud’s lectures on psychoanalysis, Wise Blood by Flannery O’Conner, some of Yeat’s early works, a manual on mountaineering, and The Stranger (at this he frowns). There is also a cook book. He wonders if Chilton is laughing at him. 

-

There are meds to calm him down, meds to perk him up, and meds to help him sleep. They eat away at him and break him down. 

The blue-green jumpsuit he wears does not belong to Will Graham. Then again he isn't entirely sure who Will Graham is anymore. 

The combined efforts of the doctors and the nurses and the orderlies are working. He is losing himself. 

-

The white walls and fluorescent lights are blinding. He sits on the floor and rests his throbbing head against the cool, metal bedframe. There’s a crack on the opposite wall. Thin as a spider web its organic chaos is a welcome relief from the clean cut lines of the asylum. He wonders if, were he to turn to vapour, he could flow through the crack, through the walls, and out to the sunlight. He knows then that this place is getting to him. 

He feels trapped inside the confines of his skull, lost in a maze of locked doors and bricked up hallways. He latches onto the tiniest of details and mulls them over for hours. He wonders if Lecter kept all those clocks. He smiles and his eyes flutter closed.

He spends days like this, slipping in and out of sleep. There is no design here, no pattern. It’s madness.

 

-

Wills grasp of time is weak at best. Sometimes the minutes slide by like molasses and then two days will pass in the blink of an eye. The knowledge that time is nothing but a human concept is of little comfort. Time was meant to serve him but now he was serving time. He knows it isn't funny but he laughs out loud. It’s a pitiful, abrasive sound and it dies in his throat. His dreams are hazy and disjointed but blissfully non-threatening. No longer does he wake in cold sweats. He wonders if his nightmares stopped because of the meds or because he is now living one.

-

He’s been thinking about Lecter a lot lately. Slowly but surely Will is waking up.

-

Alana visited him today. Their conversation was brittle and strained as they both tried to avoid acknowledging the bars separating them. She told him that the dogs miss him. He told her he missed them too. Deep down he’s just glad to be missed. 

-

A strange thing happens one Monday morning (he knows that it’s Monday because he has started reading the newspaper again). He is given a mirror and a razor to shave with. Under the close observation of two burly orderlies he gets to work. The mirror is grimy and chipped but he can see his reflection just fine. And when Will Graham sees himself staring back something clicks. He knows he will be ok. He is still there and for now that is enough to sustain him.

**Author's Note:**

> This is really terrible and cliche, I know, but I haven't written anything in over a year and I need to get back into writing.


End file.
